We hope you enjoy the official new forum of the Wars of Liberty mod for Age of Empires III! Visit this thread to get acquainted with the new forum, and let us know if there's anything we can fix. Feel free to dismiss this message at any time by clicking the "X" in the top right corner.

The two new civs are out and looking great. they both provide the means for interesting play styles that I enjoy and i'm sure they are going to be a lot of fun to play!
however there are a few things that immediately stuck out to me with each of them that make them unbalanced one way or the other.

Maltese
these guys are awesome and i love the super defensive style they give, but their infantry is a major point of weakness. while they are meant to be archaic and inferior to many other units, they do not leave a played with many viable options for creating an army later in the game.

because the infantry weak (remind me of Strelet from the base game) you reach a point in the late game where barracks infantry is no longer viable
your cav would take over fine late, but you have no good way to protect them from heavy infantry because your skirmisher unit is too weak and your ranged cav doing extra against heavy inf, is not enough.

the war-hammers from the artillery foundry are great, so the hoop throwers! but both take too much population.
going with either these or the barracks troops will cause you to be completely outclassed by either the numbers or strength of any other army.

Italians
these guys are great and i love the integration of the mafia, but i noticed some issue after fully upgrading both them and the spies:
the spies can use their siege attack while stealthed, this would be infuriating to play against.
the mafia cant take advantage of reducing gather rates because they just attack the villagers, maybe have a 'no-attack' stance so they can be stealthed and hidden in your opponents base without letting them know they are there.

Hey!
About Malta: What about Cannons? They are still a thing. Malta has a lot of late game combos so I recommend you to keep exploring.
About Italy: Well, that's just the way spies are, they don't really do much damage after all and they are pricey so most of the time, if you deal with it, it won't be worth it for the player using spies. I'll take a look at the mafioso too.

The two new civs are out and looking great. they both provide the means for interesting play styles that I enjoy and i'm sure they are going to be a lot of fun to play!
however there are a few things that immediately stuck out to me with each of them that make them unbalanced one way or the other.

Maltese
these guys are awesome and i love the super defensive style they give, but their infantry is a major point of weakness. while they are meant to be archaic and inferior to many other units, they do not leave a played with many viable options for creating an army later in the game.

because the infantry weak (remind me of Strelet from the base game) you reach a point in the late game where barracks infantry is no longer viable
your cav would take over fine late, but you have no good way to protect them from heavy infantry because your skirmisher unit is too weak and your ranged cav doing extra against heavy inf, is not enough.

the war-hammers from the artillery foundry are great, so the hoop throwers! but both take too much population.
going with either these or the barracks troops will cause you to be completely outclassed by either the numbers or strength of any other army.

Italians
these guys are great and i love the integration of the mafia, but i noticed some issue after fully upgrading both them and the spies:
the spies can use their siege attack while stealthed, this would be infuriating to play against.
the mafia cant take advantage of reducing gather rates because they just attack the villagers, maybe have a 'no-attack' stance so they can be stealthed and hidden in your opponents base without letting them know they are there.

what are your thoughts on these things? hope these suggestions help!

Arbalest have 4x bonus vs abstract infantry and 0.33x penalty vs heavy infantry. Heavy infantry is also tagged as abstract infantry. So actually arbalests have 4 x 0.33 = 1.2x bonus vs heavy infantry. Ranged cavalry has higher attack than normal and it has 1.5 ROF(I'm not sure as I've played with maltese only thrice, that too single player, with homecity xml file edited of course.) Long swordsman are quite powerful. They can take care of anything in melee. So as far as I know, you'll not face any problem with Heavy infantry. The real issue here is, maltese have no good counter for light cavalry. But still, I had no problems with maltese. They are awesome!!

Really? You mean without considering 4x vs abstract infantry, they have 1.3x vs heavy infantry? Or are you confusing with longbowmen.

The best counter for maltese is sioux. Rifle rider. Since maltese has no real counter vs light cavalry and unlike other light cavalry, this one has bonus vs HI and 1.5 ROF. So he destroys longswordsman, which is backbone of any maltese army.